Gaming, Nerdnyc: Tzolk'in, gearing up for some fun
Tzolk'in: Wow. Took over 3 hours, but really fun game (supposedly, in two previous games the game only took 2 hours; probably down further with more experience, but definitely schedule at least 3 hours for a first game.
Mayan theme, fun timing-based mechanic with a light economic system and a fantastic toy value.
The board mostly consisted of a single giant gear with 26 points of rotation and 5 lesser gears that moved with it, and each turn it either rotated one space or two (usually one). Each turn, you either had to place workers (paying progressively for placing more workers) or take as many (at least one) as you liked off--but each time the disc rotated, the ones in place would move to a better position, so you were usually best off leaving them on the board for a while to get a better return on your investment.
Managed to get a significant win (a 10 point lead, out of around 70 points of total score), but only because I was able to correctly time the last two turns of the game, setting my stuff up such that I'd be able to have all six of my workers on the board in useful positions in the final round, and could then take them all off to rack up a huge victory in the final round, with their various positions cascading.
A rather nice and satisfying cascade, too -- I mean, there was a bit of redundancy, but I was taking my first action to take 3 wood, to spend 2 of those wood to buy a building that would let me upgrade my civilization such that I'd get an extra gold whenever I took gold, then took two actions to take 1 gold (plus, in the second case, 2 stone) which became 4 gold total, then took an action that let me trade goods for food and food for goods, which let me get an extra wood and turn my unneeded goods into food (worth an extra point or two in endgame), then took my final action to buy an endgame building (a "Monument") which I needed 3 gold to pay for, and which gave me 3 points for every civ upgrade (24 points in all)--as I'd set up 4-5 turns earlier (one turn to put my worker on the "improvement/builder" wheel in the lowest position, and 4-5 turns to wait for it to get to the "build a monument" action on that wheel, the only such action in the game).
And so that I justify the terrible title, I'll note that while I'm skipping all the fun things happening this weekend (ok, most of them -- not doing Flea, not doing Wicked, not going to Boskone (no room at the inn, or I might have talked Lisa into heading up to Boston again), not doing a Regency tea dance on Sunday, etc), we're heading up to Dreamation on next Friday (and I've been upping my Soul Calibur V game to not embarass myself there then; after months not playing the game), and I expect I'll be busy playing D&D and board games and Soul and maybe even some indie RPGS.
And then the weekend after, two Larps I had a part in writing will be run by a team headed by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
crash_mccormick, so we've been handling player queries and filling drops and finishing some stuff on both games (mostly Jamais Vue, which we're doing more work on; Electric Labyrinth, also known as "The game Josh was lead writer on rather than just brainstorming, mechanicing, editing, and doing rewrite jobs with"; also known as "The Girl Genius Game" had a full production run and a minor rewrite done for Anonycon, where it didn't run, so we're just reusing that kit for the Intercon run). Jamais Vue has had more runs -- but that only means we know more of the problems with the (otherwise excellent) game and therefore get to try to fix some of the issues. However, ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
drcpunk and I won't be involved in the runtime of this (however much we are involved in casting and handling emails and writing and mechanics-redesigning and production). Because instead, we will be going to Consonance, where Merav Hoffman will be Interfilk Guest (and we've been gracefully allowed to help her out on some songs during her concert; I'll be lending some harp; Lisa will be lending her voice and comic timing).
Which means, in addition to my semi-seriously training for a semi-serious fighting game tournament, I'm also working on a larp and a half, and rehearsing for a concert that's more serious (guest slot, not program participant slot) than the other concerts we've been part of.
And yet...it's -still- been a far less stressful last few weeks than last year, when we were trying to -write-/produce two first run LARPs to be run on the same weekend, and I was trying to train for the Soul Calibur tournament. (Electric Labyrinth and A Vue to a Kill).
Mayan theme, fun timing-based mechanic with a light economic system and a fantastic toy value.
The board mostly consisted of a single giant gear with 26 points of rotation and 5 lesser gears that moved with it, and each turn it either rotated one space or two (usually one). Each turn, you either had to place workers (paying progressively for placing more workers) or take as many (at least one) as you liked off--but each time the disc rotated, the ones in place would move to a better position, so you were usually best off leaving them on the board for a while to get a better return on your investment.
Managed to get a significant win (a 10 point lead, out of around 70 points of total score), but only because I was able to correctly time the last two turns of the game, setting my stuff up such that I'd be able to have all six of my workers on the board in useful positions in the final round, and could then take them all off to rack up a huge victory in the final round, with their various positions cascading.
A rather nice and satisfying cascade, too -- I mean, there was a bit of redundancy, but I was taking my first action to take 3 wood, to spend 2 of those wood to buy a building that would let me upgrade my civilization such that I'd get an extra gold whenever I took gold, then took two actions to take 1 gold (plus, in the second case, 2 stone) which became 4 gold total, then took an action that let me trade goods for food and food for goods, which let me get an extra wood and turn my unneeded goods into food (worth an extra point or two in endgame), then took my final action to buy an endgame building (a "Monument") which I needed 3 gold to pay for, and which gave me 3 points for every civ upgrade (24 points in all)--as I'd set up 4-5 turns earlier (one turn to put my worker on the "improvement/builder" wheel in the lowest position, and 4-5 turns to wait for it to get to the "build a monument" action on that wheel, the only such action in the game).
And so that I justify the terrible title, I'll note that while I'm skipping all the fun things happening this weekend (ok, most of them -- not doing Flea, not doing Wicked, not going to Boskone (no room at the inn, or I might have talked Lisa into heading up to Boston again), not doing a Regency tea dance on Sunday, etc), we're heading up to Dreamation on next Friday (and I've been upping my Soul Calibur V game to not embarass myself there then; after months not playing the game), and I expect I'll be busy playing D&D and board games and Soul and maybe even some indie RPGS.
And then the weekend after, two Larps I had a part in writing will be run by a team headed by
crash_mccormick, so we've been handling player queries and filling drops and finishing some stuff on both games (mostly Jamais Vue, which we're doing more work on; Electric Labyrinth, also known as "The game Josh was lead writer on rather than just brainstorming, mechanicing, editing, and doing rewrite jobs with"; also known as "The Girl Genius Game" had a full production run and a minor rewrite done for Anonycon, where it didn't run, so we're just reusing that kit for the Intercon run). Jamais Vue has had more runs -- but that only means we know more of the problems with the (otherwise excellent) game and therefore get to try to fix some of the issues. However, drcpunk and I won't be involved in the runtime of this (however much we are involved in casting and handling emails and writing and mechanics-redesigning and production). Because instead, we will be going to Consonance, where Merav Hoffman will be Interfilk Guest (and we've been gracefully allowed to help her out on some songs during her concert; I'll be lending some harp; Lisa will be lending her voice and comic timing).Which means, in addition to my semi-seriously training for a semi-serious fighting game tournament, I'm also working on a larp and a half, and rehearsing for a concert that's more serious (guest slot, not program participant slot) than the other concerts we've been part of.
And yet...it's -still- been a far less stressful last few weeks than last year, when we were trying to -write-/produce two first run LARPs to be run on the same weekend, and I was trying to train for the Soul Calibur tournament. (Electric Labyrinth and A Vue to a Kill).
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(And I got the setting right, from the name, which in my part of acanerdia was pretty much a giveaway.)
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I don't really know enough about the setting to "get" the name aside from that the use of zs and ' does point to a mayan origin.